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Sprite: a different drone
- BoardsOfCanada 11y agoAm I the only one who just can stand these promotional videos? guitar music What if there was a... CLICK I don't know what it is, I just get a feeling of being treated like an idiot with a wallet.
- bttf 11y agoYeah, I muted the video as soon as I heard those first guitar chords.
- BoardsOfCanada 11y agoThanks, I'm just amazed that someone upvoted my grumpy post :)
- Animats 11y ago"guitar music What if there was a... CLICK" It's like Wordpress. There are templates.[1] [1] http://videohive.net/tags/kickstarter http://videohive.net/tags/kickstarter
- return0 11y agoso cringefully generic. Who are these chords even trying to appeal to? ffs this drone might be used by farmers or soldiers
- coldcode 11y agoNice design, makes more sense than the quads.
- geobmx540 11y agoHow does it make more sense? (Coming from someone with no clue and looking for insights)
- emilecantin 11y agoIt has a much better form factor for carrying in a backpack than a quad; it can fit in a water bottle pocket.
- pbreit 11y agoI can see the benefit of collapsibility. But does it fly better (or worse)?
- gnopgnip 11y agoThe design is more energy efficient than a quadcopter.
- codezero 11y agoCan anyone savvy here weigh in on how much having a two-axis rather than three-axis gimbal will affect the stability of the video, if at all?
- OrwellianChild 11y agoThe third axis would just provide the ability to pan the video without rotating the drone itself. With SPRITE's pod-style helicopter design, they may be able to use the counter-rotor to provide the third axis of rotation automatically.
- baddox 11y agoYes, the third axis is for yaw stability. While you certainly want that for professional aerial video, it's not at all necessary for these action sports products. Also, the aircraft can definitely yaw.
- codezero 11y agoBut this also ties the stability to the stability of the drone itself, if it had a third axis, that could be used to compensate for the drone stability, right?
- lsaferite 11y agoSince they are using coaxial blade and vectoring via cyclic control, stabilizing the camera on a third axis would be pointless. Worse really, it would be excess weight. The coaxial blades are used to rotate the aircraft around that third axis. The flight controller will just adjust the calculations needed to maintain the correct heading and the corect camera direction on the fly. The 2-axis stabilization is 'needed' to compensate for pitch/roll of the aircraft cause by the cyclic control of the blades. I've been pretty critical of UAV kickstarters, but I actually think this one is quite interesting and likely has a bright future.
- codezero 11y agoThanks! That's really helpful.
- emehrkay 11y agoIn the next 10 or so years, kids will have some pretty cool toys. My son would love to have this for his bike rides. 2025 these things will be as common as an iPad and will have things like environment-awareness. This looks pretty cool. I cannot wait to see how this evolves.
- stephengillie 11y agoI'm still waiting for the Perpetual Eclipse. The Perpetual Eclipse is a quadcopter that calculates where the sun is, triangulates where your eyes are, and just floats in the direct path light travels when it gets in your eyes.
- bentcorner 11y ago"Point-Defense Sunglasses"
- OrwellianChild 11y agoAdding SPRITE to the list of upcoming autonomous camera drones I made for the Lily announcement... Prices/status for reference: Status Release Price ----------- --------- ------------ AirDog* Pre-Order Q3 2015 $1,295 HEXO+* Pre-Order Sept 2015 $1,299 IRIS+* Available Now $750 Mind4* Kickstarter Failed $900-$1,489 Solo* Pre-Order May 2015 $1,399 Ares HD Kickstarter Feb 2016 $999 Lily Pre-Order Feb 2016 $519-$1,019 SPRITE Kickstarter Dec 2015 $799 *Note that all but Ares HD, Lily, & SPRITE require a $300 GoPro camera. Price ranges are for Pre-Order vs. Post-Ship pricing. EDIT: Added Ares HD & Solo.
- flyinglizard 11y agoYou need to add the 3DR Solo to the list at $999.
- DrStartup 11y agoAresdrones.com - https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/aresdrones/ares-finally-a-drone-everyone-can-fly https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/aresdrones/ares-finally...
- declan 11y agoThis is a great list -- thanks for posting it. FYI it looks like the IRIS+ is now $599, and the IRIS Solo is $999 and is scheduled to ship next month: https://store.3drobotics.com/products/iris https://store.3drobotics.com/products/iris For general use, is there a compelling reason to wait until this fall or next year instead of buying the current IRIS now or the new one next month? The SPRITE looks nicely ruggedized and compact, but that's not a big a concern for me. (I have no affiliation with any of the autonomous camera drone makers. But unless there's a compelling reason I prefer to avoid the risk of having a promised project fail to ship.)
- semi-extrinsic 11y agoAdd a few things like top speed, range, flight time, tracking method, and you've got yourself a nice popular webpage/blog post.
- pdq 11y agoDid they really trademark Sprite™? Doesn't Coca Cola own that?
- dragonwriter 11y ago> Did they really trademark Sprite™? Probably. > Doesn't Coca Cola own that? Within a particular domain. Trademarks do not cover all possible commercial uses of a mark.
- ceejayoz 11y agoTrademarks are industry-scoped. http://law.freeadvice.com/intellectual_property/trademark_law/trademark_protection.htm http://law.freeadvice.com/intellectual_property/trademark_la...
- jellicle 11y ago> Did they really trademark Sprite™? No, or they would have used the R symbol instead of the TM. > Doesn't Coca Cola own that? Yes, and under modern trademark law, Coca-Cola will be contacting/threatening them shortly, so you can expect a project name change. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Trademark_Dilution_Act http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Trademark_Dilution_Act
- narrowrail 11y agoAs mentioned by others, that's not how trademark law works. Soda and drones are not likely to be confused in the marketplace. I'd bet you $1000 on longbets.org that KO do not cause this company to change the name of their toy drone company.
- iamcurious 11y agoMy understanding of law leaves lots to be desired, but wouldn't the trial, even if they won, be way too expensive? And there is always the risk of losing, Coca-Cola can certainly afford better lawyers.
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- TheSisb2 11y agoMy one concern with all these new drones that keep popping up is the flight duration. This one is among the worst I've seen: "... flight endurance, which is currently around 12 minutes". Others in the market don't seem to be much better, clocking around 30mins - 1hr per flight. Are any of these able to fly a preset, waypoint path for two or more hours? I don't want to be thinking about the landing just as soon as it gets up in the air.
- steckerbrett 11y agoThe limit is the batteries mostly. You won't be seeing that sort of performance from an electrically powered helicopter without some drastic improvements in battery power density.
- mrec 11y agoOr drastic reductions in weight. I don't know which is more likely. I suppose if it gets too light then wind becomes more of a problem.
- TheSisb2 11y agoCouldn't you add more battery? Sure it's more weight but I'd imagine more battery would result in slightly higher power output and an increase in flight duration. The added weight would help against wind gusts too.
- steckerbrett 11y agoAbsolutely. This is being pitched as a consumer product you can throw in your bag though, which has definite size and usability constraints. For safety you really don't want people carrying around a backpack stuffed with Lithium Polymer cells either, that's a disaster waiting to happen if someone falls over backwards and pierces one of the cells.
- lambda 11y agoLet's work out how that would work, in a simplified model of the world. Let's say you have a 1000mAh battery at 10V that weighs 100g (these numbers have all been made round for purposes of easier arithmetic). Everything else on your drone is weightless, and your motors have perfect efficiency. To keep this aloft, you need to overcome 9.8 m/s^2 that is applied by Earth's gravity; but since we're simplifying things, let's just round that to 10 m/s^2. 10 m/s^2 * 100g is 1 N, which means it requires 1 W of power to keep that battery aloft (resist the force of gravity). 1Ah * 10 V = 10 Wh, so that means you could stay aloft for 10 h (remember, these numbers are unrealistic, we have ignored any kind of efficiency, or the weight of the rest of the drone, etc). So, lets use two batteries. Now we have 20 Wh of energy available, but we're holding up 200g of battery, which requires 2 W of power to stay aloft, so again, we can stay aloft for just 10 h. And remember, all of this was ignoring any notion of efficiency or the weight of any other part of the craft to support this. As you increase the weight, motors will need to get more powerful to be able to actually keep it aloft, which means they need to get bigger, which is extra weight that you need to support that isn't giving you any extra energy. So the real world is actually even worse than our idealized model; as you add on more battery, only a fraction of the increase in weight adds more energy, so you will actually see shorter flight times. Now, of course, there are designs for which increasing the amount of battery can lead to increased flight times. If the power supplied by the motors is sufficient to sustain the extra weight, so they don't need to be scaled up, then increasing the amount of battery relative to the rest of the weight of the craft can lead to higher efficiency as there is less relative "dead weight" (weight besides the batteries, that is not carrying energy). But that can only take you so far, which is why the flight times of drones plateau at a certain point and you can't fix it by just adding more battery. This is why you don't see electric helicopters carrying people. The energy to weight ratio for batteries is too low; only fossil fuels have a sufficient energy density.
- Animats 11y agoThat's a nice piece of mechanical engineering. They crammed two full helicopter blade pitch control heads into that cylinder and made it rugged.
- peterwwillis 11y agoWhy does it look like some sort of flying bomb? I'm much more terrified of that hitting me than a rectangular piece of plastic that doesn't look like a ballistic missile.
- utku_karatas2 11y agoYou're not alone. Actually every time I see similar products out there I see flying death but this one specifically looks like it could drop a bite-sized doom on me. :) The fast pace of development and availability of these kind of flying machinery is bound to create security implications sooner or later. These things would be great for assassinations or with a fleet of them you can absolutely terrorize the hell of a sizable area.
- return0 11y agoAlso great startup opportunities.
- biggc 11y agoI'm going to be the childish person and say what I'm sure other people are thinking. This is a very phallic looking drone.
- evan_ 11y agoNo, this is a phallic-looking drone: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IRslKeT0EmQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IRslKeT0EmQ (arguably NSFW)
- hkon 11y agoI just wonder, are drones like these purchased by "enthusiasts" in the middle-east?
- hkon 11y ago3 patriots detected
- tomelders 11y agoSeems like a market that goosoftple will soon be entering, or at least making some acquihires
- Riegerb 11y agoLooking at this from an Aerospace Engineering perspective, the weight distribution / CG properties may significantly limit the lateral movement of this vehicle; looks as such in the videos as well. This is because in order for a helicopter to move laterally it must pitch the rotors (in this case meaning the entire body) and a cg far from the rotor location makes this difficult. Something to think about.
- digikata 11y agoThis application might not need that much lateral performance, and the cg as is gives you nice static stability margin where you can relax all sorts of other requirements (control loop can be slower, the nav sensors can be lower performance, it's less sensitive to wind gusts, etc).
- Riegerb 11y agoAbsolutely - I just wanted to point this out after seeing some discussion about this as a 'follow-me' type of sports filming drone.
- mhandley 11y agoDon't helicopters behave similar to rockets as regards CG properties? I would think the Pendulum Rocket Fallacy would apply here too: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pendulum_rocket_fallacy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pendulum_rocket_fallacy In fact a large fuselage hanging down from below the rotor can cause a helicopter to become unstable. If the helicopter rolls, the rotor will slip sideways, gaining horizontal speed. The drag on the fuselage below the rotor will cause the helicopter to roll further, causing increased slip and increased horizontal speed, hences increased roll. To avoid this the rotors will have dihedral (they're angled upwards slightly). This is what gives stability. Somewhat counterintuitively, a helicopter is actually more stable in roll if the fuselage is above the rotor, but that usually makes it hard to land safely: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=Q27ho2szWCoC&pg=PA346#v=onepage&q&f=false https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=Q27ho2szWCoC&pg=PA346#v=...
- outworlder 11y agoSo, it is a helicopter with variable pitch blades. How does it compare, reliability-wise, with quads? Quads only have to change rotation speed. This one needs to change pitch, as helicopters do.
- alexander996 11y agoSeems like a great thing. :) One question. Are those propellers safe? They are not covered with anything and may potentially hurt owner or other people (face, eyes).
- atroyn 11y agoAlso on product hunt: http://www.producthunt.com/posts/sprite http://www.producthunt.com/posts/sprite
- atroyn 11y agoAlso on product hunt: http://www.producthunt.com/posts/sprite http://www.producthunt.com/posts/sprite
- IanDrake 11y agoIt looks like image stabilization will be difficult with this design. The camera seems to be at the bottom of a pendulum that swings as the drone moves about. Perhaps that's why the promo video shows very little actual footage.
- OrwellianChild 11y agoThey're including a 2-axis gimbal that should (mostly) compensate for this.